international health, life in the boonies, family doc stuff… musings from rural Canada

Posted by: sayamika, the killer bunny | 2006 November 12

Malawi

It’s a small world sometimes.

Last night I was sitting in my favourite cafe, Croissant de Lune on St-Denis, having savoured strawberry+chocolate crepes with coffee. I was attempting to work on my final CaRMS stuff with their fab free internet…And I saw someone wearing this on her T-shirt.

I couldn’t help saying out loud “Oh my god, that’s the Malawi flag.”

Anyhow, this started a whole conversation about Malawi… turns out this couple had just returned a few months earlier from a two-year contract with WUSC.Oh, it was fun. We had a great deal of comparisons to make. They warned me that the place has changed a lot: even fewer trees, more talk about bauxite open-casting on Mulanje Mountain…. which would make extinct the Mulanje cedar, ruin a beautiful environment, and provide huge amounts of money to a few very wealthy people while the rest of the money left the country and provided no benefit whatsoever to the local population, because of course the aluminum cannot be processed in a country without a good supply of electricity, so it would be exported (likely to SA) and most of the profit would go there.

What, me, rant?

Anyhow, we had a great conversation, and she put me in touch with some people in Malawi who might be able to help me out with transport, and it really helped to get me in the mindset to be going. Only a week now.

Thanks, Nicole. You’ll hear from me.

PS: Check out this post on the American health system from the point of view of a med student.

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